*sigh* okay.... so, are you guys saying, if I am to understand correctly, that brilliant, manipulative, self centered, self preservationist, Loki, is actually stupid enough and suicidal enough to place his life in mortal danger by going to Jotunheim with Thor and co at the beginning of the film as part of his grand master plan to get the throne? Because that shows a great deal of stupidity on his part and again makes him suicidal (although he was that in the end). He had no way of knowing that he would survive that trip as it was clearly foreshadowed by the trepidation of Sif and the Warriors 3. And so he and the others going on that trip, the one that started the impending war, was most definitely not his plan. Did he manipulate in other places? Sure. But that part, the war itself, definitely not. A truly wise manipulator would have planned that Jotunheim part out well ahead of time, and very definitely would have planned an airtight excuse for why he couldn't go down to Jotunheim.

Yes: Loki is stupid. Very stupid. In both Thor and Avengers. But not in *his* mind. He's not a "wise manipulator": he even says so himself in Thor 1, "Who said I was wise?"

He takes a LOT of gambles without thinking them through, and then just tries to roll with the punches when they go south on him. Any one of his schemes could (and many did) backfire --- yes, the Frost Giants on Jotunheim could've slaughtered him and everyone else in the commando raid; Odin could've caught wind of the raid and stopped it beforehand, thus ending almost *all* of Loki's subsequent schemes with Thor making Daddy proud as the new king; Heimdall's all-seeing eye could've caught Loki red-handed in many different situations; Laufey could've easily succeeded in murdering Odin in his sleep, causing Loki's theatrical heroics to flop dismally; and so on.

Hell, Avengers was a complete comedy of errors for Loki --- he wound up getting outwitted, challenged and defeated at every turn by every one from Black Widow to Hulk to Tony Stark. His mind control spells were practically useless --- Widow was able to snap Hawkeye out of it with a good swift roundhouse kick to the noggin; the heroes were able to quickly figure out that the Spear was the real source of their internal squabblings; and heck, he couldn't even sway a random old Jewish guy in Stuttgart who stood up and heckled him. Not to mention that he got his ass kicked and lost an entire freakin' army several centuries more advanced than anything on Earth to a mere half-dozen guys and gals in funny suits. And even further, he didn't even realize that he was being manipulated the whole time by the very "gangster lord of the Nine Realms" he had been trading with.

Yes, Loki is a master manipulator; but he is a poor, poor planner. He does things on the fly, on the spur of the moment, according to his whim. That's what makes him a god of mischief, not a god of elaborate schemes.